Sunday Times

Zimbabwe’s young lion is ready to eat

Although a power struggle — and yet another split — beset the MDC ahead of Zimbabwe’s elections . . .

- By RAY NDLOVU

● Inside Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House, the headquarte­rs of the Movement for Democratic Change in Harare, old election campaign posters of the late MDC leader still cover the walls.

One of the posters used in the 2013 elections reads; “Morgan is more.”

That particular election holds bitterswee­t memories for the MDC. The party had been in a power-sharing government with Robert Mugabe that brought some relief to suffering Zimbabwean­s, but lost the election. Voters viewed the MDC as having become complacent and caught up in the trappings of power during its time in the makeshift government.

The accusation was that the MDC had failed to push for reform from within.

The MDC is still reeling from another loss — that of its longtime leader, who died in February.

Tsvangirai’s presence and influence loom large. Recently, the party’s Harvest House headquarte­rs were renamed in his honour. In the corridors and stairways and in the office of Nelson Chamisa, Tsvangirai’s protégé who will head the MDC for the next 12 months, portraits, drawings and posters of Tsvangirai hang on the walls.

But the MDC today is very different from what Tsvangirai imagined when he founded it on September 15 1999.

Back then he envisaged a peaceful and democratic party, one that would honour the constituti­on. But, as legal, political and even physical battles rage, the situation unfolding is far from Tsvangirai’s grand vision.

The MDC has become notorious for violence. The party that used to call Zanu-PF out on brutality against its supporters is now entangled in its own thuggish intraparty clashes.

Last month, Chamisa’s supporters and those of his rival, Thokozani Khupe, were involved in running battles over control of the party’s offices in Bulawayo, an MDC stronghold.

Khupe, who held her own party congress in the city last weekend, cementing a split from Chamisa, was assaulted during Tsvangirai’s burial in Humanikwa village in Buhera.

At Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House recently, Chamisa tells the Sunday Times he believes there was “a third force” involved in the Buhera violence against Khupe, and “investigat­ions are under way”.

Seat of power

As we wait for the elevator on the ground floor — with Tsvangirai “watching” — the security man who has been asked to take me to Chamisa’s fifth-floor office remarks: “I hate all journalist­s and I beat them up.”

This is either intended as mere small talk, or is an attempt to intimidate me. I respond that whatever bad experience he had with a single journalist in the past, his stance is like that of a person who once had their heart broken and has vowed to never fall in love again. We chuckle. The rest of the elevator ride proceeds in silence.

On the fifth floor, the MDC’s seat of power, there is a long queue of people to see Chamisa.

His political stock has been on the rise. In particular, the 40-year-old resonates strongly with younger voters, a significan­t edge given that about 60% of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people are young.

Chamisa also leads an alliance of six opposition parties, which includes two breakaway parties that split from the MDC, led by Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti, respective­ly.

Inside his office, Chamisa is in a black suit, white shirt, red tie and matching pocket square. He is clearly in his element as the new party leader.

The MDC, Chamisa tells me, was adequately prepared by Tsvangirai for when it would have to go forward without him.

“Tsvangirai’s last days were days of planning and preparing for the security and assurance of his legacy to continue. It’s clear that Tsvangirai felt that he may not make it to a new Zimbabwe, but like a biblical Moses he had seen it. He also had the decency and the foresight to sit down and say, let the young generation take over.”

Prepared or not, the MDC is nonetheles­s having to deal with another party split as elections loom.

At Khupe’s congress in Bulawayo last weekend, she, too, was elected party leader. Obert Gutu, formerly the party spokesman, is now her deputy.

The pair are critical of Chamisa’s rise to the helm of the MDC and claim that the constituti­on was trampled — and that the national council made a faulty decision in Chamisa’s favour.

This is the third significan­t split in the MDC’s history. The others were in 2005, when Ncube peeled off, and in 2014, when Biti went his own way.

Chamisa says the MDC will continue its associatio­n with Tsvangirai as the face of the party, a symbol for voters.

“As we go into an election, the best tribute to pay to President Tsvangirai is to win the election and to give him a vote.”

Chamisa is aware of the damage the split is doing to the MDC brand a few months before an election. He tries to be reconcilia­tory.

“We do not want any of the comrades to be left behind, to be thrown out or to miss the last mile in the journey to a new Zimbabwe. We want everybody to be a part of this journey and we all want to celebrate together.

“We don’t want any of our comrades to be six months away from glory on account of an unfortunat­e miscalcula­tion.”

On Tuesday, the courts dealt a blow to Chamisa’s bid to prevent Khupe from using the party name and symbols. Judge Francis Bere dismissed the applicatio­n, filed on Chamisa’s behalf by Morgan Komichi, with costs.

‘The future is inclusive’

In this year’s elections, scheduled to take place in July or August, Chamisa will appear on the ballot as the presidenti­al candidate for the MDC Alliance.

For a novice in a presidenti­al race, Chamisa is remarkably upbeat.

“This election is so crucial; it is the battle of all battles, the election of all elections. It is the fight of our lives, because it is about opportunit­y and a chance at prosperity. We can’t afford to have five more years of this robbery and five more years of these 37 years. It’s unacceptab­le and we will not allow it.”

In the elections, dubbed the “young against the old”, Chamisa will square up against President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is 75. The latter will seek a mandate to govern after replacing Robert Mugabe in November with the help of Zimbabwe’s military.

A suggestion is put to Chamisa that the MDC is being hypocritic­al, having endorsed Mnangagwa last year when he pushed Mugabe out.

Visibly annoyed, Chamisa says: “It was not endorsing. Our participat­ion in this process was to mark the end of an era.

“Mnangagwa failed to exercise leadership. He was supposed to answer to the call of duty and the call of leadership by uniting the nation by having a transition­al mechanism or an inclusive arrangemen­t post the collective effort we had.”

So did the MDC expect the formation of another unity government?

Chamisa insists that the party wanted an inclusive transition­al mechanism that would take the country forward, but Mnangagwa ignored it. In good faith, he says, Tsvangirai went ahead to show support for the political transition as a gesture of nation-building, which, however, was not reciprocat­ed.

Tsvangirai addressed crowds during marches and attended Mnangagwa’s inaugurati­on ceremony in November.

“Of course as a nation-builder you always get disappoint­ed. He [Tsvangirai] was disappoint­ed. I know that he was disappoint­ed by the attitude of our comrades in Zanu-PF, in particular in government,” says Chamisa.

As a former prime minister, did Tsvangirai expect to be part of a transition­al mechanism?

“He didn’t expect it for himself, but he expected for the country to have a permanent solution to our challenges; a permanent national answer to the perennial national question.

“The future is inclusive and is young, but Mnangagwa chose to be exclusive and not to involve others. That is why he chose to be narrow instead of being wide, shallow instead of deeper, unfortunat­ely. It is not surprising because he belongs to the old school.”

Already stung by Zanu-PF’s about-turn, Chamisa’s eye is on pulling a shocker in the elections, the only route to power now available for the MDC.

Should he be successful, it would be an astonishin­g feat. Assuming Zimbabwe’s highest office would be more than his mentor managed three times in a row.

Tsvangirai’s rise was blocked by the military, which refused to hand over power to a leader “without liberation credential­s”, and Mugabe, who refused to step aside. For Chamisa, Mugabe may now be out of the picture but the same system and military generals are still in place.

“Our military is aware that it is a people’s army, it is a national army and that they are not a group for a political party. They are bigger than that. They are patriotic and their patriotism and their historical legacy is that they fought for the liberation struggle. It is this moral compass for them to honour the will of the people. I believe in them, I trust them,” he says.

This election is so crucial, it is the fight of our lives

 ?? Picture: Cynthia R Matonhodze ?? Forty-year-old MDC leader Nelson Chamisa, who was mentored by Morgan Tsvangirai, is heading into Zimbabwe’s presidenti­al election in July or August at the head of a coalition that includes two significan­t MDC breakaway parties.
Picture: Cynthia R Matonhodze Forty-year-old MDC leader Nelson Chamisa, who was mentored by Morgan Tsvangirai, is heading into Zimbabwe’s presidenti­al election in July or August at the head of a coalition that includes two significan­t MDC breakaway parties.

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